


Mistranslations

by ScreamingViking



Series: Fire and Lightning [3]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Poetry, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, F/M, Ficlets, Hurt/Comfort, Poisoning, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), assorted aus, child endangerment, ffvii rarepair week 2020, misuse of everything my english teacher ever gave me, terrible literary analysis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26266609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreamingViking/pseuds/ScreamingViking
Summary: After Hawke awoke in the city of Midgar and found herself in the company of a Cetra and a degrading SOLDIER, a number of things could have happened. These are some of them.Supporting fics and AUs from the universe of The Thief Kindly Spoke.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Genesis Rhapsodos
Series: Fire and Lightning [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/235218
Comments: 24
Kudos: 41





	1. Banter

**Author's Note:**

> This will make very little sense if you haven't read The Thief Kindly Spoke, or at the very least its first iteration Champions and Heroes. 
> 
> This is where I'm going post any scenes that took place just slightly off camera, or AU versions of the main story. It will contain spoilers up to the current chapter of that work. Ratings may change and tags will be added. 
> 
> First up: My entry to 2020's FFvii RarePair Week over on Tumblr.

Genesis held open the café door and followed Hawke in out of the afternoon drizzle.

He flicked the rain drops out of his hair and looked around. It was a small, modern place, with an exposed brick feature wall and black metal counters and tables. It was busy enough that nobody looked up at their entrance. Weak sunlight streamed in through the rain on the windows and the whistle of frothing milk rang out.

Hawke looked amusingly out of place in a place so mundane and modern, in her worn leather and angular armour running up her arm. She carried herself with enough confidence to be mistaken for an edgy fashionista taking a bold risk, instead of the slightly feral refugee that she was. Standing next to him, it wasn't an unreasonable assumption.

They picked a little table by the window so they could see when her train arrived.

Genesis took off his damp jacket and draped it over the back of the chair. His side ached with the movement. He kept a pleasant expression anchored to his face and settled onto the chair with as much grace as he could. Hawke leaned forward over her crossed arms. She showed no signs of having noticed. She probably had, she always seemed to pick up on these things, and after the magical healing she'd given him earlier, she knew exactly where he was injured and to what extent.

His expression turned grim. The afternoon of research and magic study had gone well, but the truth was becoming increasingly clear: her healing was having diminishing returns on his degradation.

A waiter took their order and brought out two cappuccinos and an almond croissant. He toyed with one of the cake forks, his appetite gone.

" _Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess_ ," he muttered. It came out more bitter than he intended.

Hawke reached forward and put a gentle hand over his. He braced himself for unwelcome pity.

"I think," she said, looking at him with quiet, thoughtful conviction, "that it's a metaphor for the military-industrial complex."

He blinked. "What?"

"Loveless." She tossed back a gulp of coffee. "Oh, that's very hot."

"No, it isn't," he replied slowly.

"Sure it is. Plain as day."

He pursed his lips. It was a ridiculous claim, and most likely made at his expense. There was no point explaining why it was wrong, the many, _many_ reasons why it was wrong. The seconds ticked by as more counter arguments presented themselves to him. He narrowed his eyes.

Hawke took another sip, watching him defiantly.

"It can't be," he said, giving in. "It was written over six hundred years ago."

She flicked her fringe aside. "Amazing how it's still so relevant in this day and age."

"It's from a time before anyone on the eastern continent had so much as standing armies. Military-Industrial complex, its _pre_ -industrial." He stabbed the croissant and deftly sliced it down the middle. "You know, like you."

"Making me the only one on this planet qualified to interpret it," she replied with that galling smile of hers. "We have a strong oral culture on Thedas, you know, I'm very familiar with these things.

He scoffed. "I see. _The arrow has left the bow of the goddess_."

"Such poignant martial imagery, don't you think? Something was clearly on the poet's mind."

He gave her his own patronising, biting smile. "You're not as cute as you think."

"Fine," she sniffed. "I'll keep it to myself."

"No, no, by all means." He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "Convince me."

Her smile looked very much like that of a shark. Or a con artist.

"Recite the first stanza for me."

He recited the poem and she listened intently before offering the most absurd twists on the imagery, obviously making it up as she went along and misusing phrases without shame. He let nothing go and made her justify every point, but she was wily enough of an improviser to keep from contradicting herself. There was much gesturing with empty coffee cups and scattering of pastry crumbs.

" _Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall my forestall,_ " he said, pointing with the tiny fork.

She brushed it off, "an allusion to economic momentum, if I ever heard one. Even after there's nothing left to win, the machine of war has already picked up too much speed to stop."

"Then who, pray tell, is doing the returning?"

"Military budgets."

He laughed.

She rallied herself.

"And then of course the ending: ' _The wind sails over the water's surface, quietly but surely_.' A poignant reference to the last breath and death rattle of the innumerable victims, their damning final cries carrying over the growing pool of blood." She paused, looking pleased with herself. . "Or I would accept birds and sea life choking over spilled oil for a more environmental angle. It's a plainly anti-war piece of literature either way."

He crossed his arms, stubbornly not buying it. "What does that make the gift of the goddess? Is it the fanaticism of eco-movements like AVALANCHE?"

She lifted her chin imperiously. "You're not taking this seriously."

He leveled a look at her. She flashed that dangerous smile at him.

Around them the café was busy with people they paid no attention to. Clouds blocked the sun, the rain picked up, and Hawke deflected his arguments.

"It all connects. ' _Wings of light and dark spread afar,_ ' refers to the innocent and the guilty," she said, amending a point she had fumbled on the first pass. "Spread out side by side upon the killing fields, like feathers torn from a wing, fluttering to the ground and trampled in the mud."

He shook his head. "No, no, no, they're the goddess's wings, it doesn't make sense for them to be the dead… unless you subscribe to the notion that she's a goddess of death, delivering humanity its final justice?"

"Oh no, 'the goddess' isn't the actual goddess, she's purely symbolic," she said. She threw the last bite of the pastry into her mouth and licked icing sugar off the sharp tip of her spiked gauntlet and he was momentarily distracted by the sight.

"Symbolic for what?"

She shrugged. "Whatever lofty excuse is used to justify the war profiteering. Whether its faith, revenge, profits, the goddess is the false narrative that launches the arrow of war."

"Oh," he leaned back in outrage, struggling to keep the smile from his face. "Blasphemous _and_ inaccurate."

"Oh yes? Why?"

"How can the goddess launch the war when she doesn't descend until after it's brought about the world's ending?"

"Because she launches the war from the heavens. It's a bow, it's a ranged weapon, she can do that," she replied with a dismissive flick of her hands. "And in fact she has to be absent at its start, because after the war of the beasts has brought about the world's end, she is brought low by her descent: no heavenly creature but a base thing revealed in its bitter truth."

He opened his mouth to object, then closed it again. That was an interpretation of the goddess' descent he hadn't heard before. A descent in the truest form, not a glorious arrival to judge humanity, but a fall from grace. It made him want to reread the longer text of the play and consider the possibilities.

He studied Hawke through narrowed eyes. She uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way, contriving to look serious and intellectual. How she had weaseled her way into something resembling a coherent theory he didn't know.

"Outrageous," he said, when the reasons why it couldn't be so refused to spring to mind. "You're outrageous. If the goddess is false, or a force of evil then… then that's a wholly different story."

She smiled serenely. "It's a metaphor."

"And what is the metaphor's gift then, the gift of the for-profit goddess?"

"What does the bad-faith fuel for eternal war give to the world?" she wondered aloud. She spread her hands out. "Why, mutually assured destruction, of course. The terrible, inevitable ending that could have been averted if not for the resolute march onward into oblivion."

"That's… almost poignant."

A slow, toothy grin spread across her face.

"No. Wait," he said, already regretting it.

She pointed with her empty cup. "I got you."

"No, you did not."

"Yes I did."

He laid his hands flat on the table and leaned forward. "I am not letting you improvise your way through such a terrible interpretation."

"I just did," she replied with the most aggravating smirk. "Even the missing ending fits, it's symbolic for a world cut short by ever mounting conflict: ' _the end of the journey, in my own salvation, and your eternal slumber_.' Terribly apt, wouldn't you say?"

"I would say nothing of the sort, no matter how deftly you misconstrue it." He threw his hands up. "You haven't even touched on the wanderer or the lover."

She laughed and looked down. "Give me five minutes."

"No, I shan't." He lifted his head and tossed his hair back. "I remain unconvinced."

Outside the train pulled into the station.

Hawke grabbed her bag and staff and got up. "I think you just need to expand your horizons. You can't put art in a box."

He shook his head at her, lips pursed in mock disapproval. "And people call _me_ shameless."

"The man says he wants to talk about poetry, then gets angry when you talk about poetry. There's simply no pleasing some people," she said archly.

"Oh please."

They said their goodbyes and she ran out into the rain.

He stayed sitting and watched the train light up and pull away, distorted through the streaks of water. A smile danced on his lips.

"Oh!" An idea dawned on him and he fished out his phone and quickly texted Hawke saying that the goddess was a recurring motif in texts of that era and a well-established symbol of judgement. Another reason why it was patently absurd.

A moment later she replied that it only made the goddess's use here a subversive commentary on contemporary works.

"Ridiculous woman," he muttered, flipping his phone shut again. He stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. He couldn't remember the last time he had gotten that worked up over a discussion of Loveless. People rarely humoured him over it these days.

He thought of a rebuttal and sent another text.

Maybe she would have come up with another absurd notion by the time they met again.


	2. Nascence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flagrant hurt/comfort one. Not canon to the Thief Kindly Spoke.

Genesis' phone rang. Or more accurately, one of the piles of paperwork on his desk rang.

He didn't remember putting all those requisition forms there, Lazard's PA must have been getting passive aggressive again. The paper stack vibrated in time with a jaunty tune, and a smile spread across his lips. That would be Hawke, rescuing him from a particularly dull day.

He pushed the papers aside and dug up a phone glowing with a grinning face and sparkling, laughing eyes. She had been midway through telling a joke he didn't remember but given her expression she was delighted at her own cleverness over the upcoming punchline. He smiled every time he saw it.

He swung away from his desk, leaned back in his chair and put an ankle up on his knee. The hazy glow of midday seeped in through the windows.

"It's the middle of the work day, Hawke," he drawled into the phone. "I should hope this is important."

"Sorry," she rasped. "It is quite poorly timed, isn't it?"

He sat up straight. "What's wrong?"

"I'm poisoned and I've got a broken leg."

He was out of his chair and dragging his coat on before she finished the sentence. He transferred the call to his earpiece and started ransaking his drawers for potions, ethers, and materia.

"Where are you?"

"In the plate," she said with a pained grunt.

" _In_ the plate?"

"The crawl space. Sector 2, there's an entrance behind the reactor."

He nodded and headed for the door, his sword and a row of glowing bottles on his belt "Enemies?"

"Between me and the door." The sounds of metal grating against metal came over the line, then an impact like a body hitting the ground "I'm up a ledge. Out of reach." she wheezed.

"Don't move," he ordered.

"Did I mention... the broken leg?"

A Third Class tried to get his attention. He waved them off without stopping and stalked to the elevators. Hawke was fiercely independent and dangerous enough to usually get away with it. That she had reached out for help without even trying to lighten the mood or deny that was why she called filled him with dread.

He shifted fully into mission mode, and anyone who saw got out of his way.

"Mana levels?" he asked, pressing the buttons with undue pressure.

"Low. Fresh out of ethers too."

He kept her talking while he took a vehicle and headed off to Sector 2. She couldn't afford to fall asleep before he could cast cure on her. Her voice fell quieter. He drove faster. He ruthlessly squashed his panic down.

"I'm behind the reactor," he said, throwing the door open when he got there. "Where's the entrance?"

She talked him through it, her voice barely a whisper. She led him to a rusting iron door that had recently had it's lock picked. He sliced it in two. A void of darkness greeted him.

Sword drawn, he plunged in.

Stairs led down, down, deep inside the structure of the plate. The crawl space was intended for maintenance staff only and evidently even they hadn't come this way in years. It echoed and dripped, and cold draughts moved through the passages. Monsters skittered away in the dark.

He had had no idea this place even existed. He followed a trail of destruction, but had to get more directions for areas where she had stealthed past the beasts rather than engaging. He cut through everything she'd left alive.

Sometimes the space was huge, other times the ceiling came in so low he couldn't stand up straight. Towering machinery blocked the path in places, leaking mako pipes ran overhead, and sudden voids cut into the path without warning. There was no forward or backward, just meandering narrow spaces that doubled back on themselves and led to more pits of darkness and monster nests.

Hawke's voice whispered in his ear, leading him on.

"T intersection with three dead makonoids," he said.

"Left turn," she breathed. "Climb the ladder."

"Up or down?"

The response took too long. He gripped his sword tighter.

"Hawke. Which way?"

"...Up."

Her breathing grew shallow on the other end of the line. He snapped his questions at her, sometimes startling her into responding. The responses grew further apart nevertheless.

The crawl space stretched across the entire city.

"How far from the entrance are you?" he asked.

There was silence on the other end.

"Hawke?"

He couldn't hear her breathing.

He ran.

The cramped space opened up into a wide area beneath a sprawling network of mako pipes. A giant, wounded makonoid skulked around in the remains of smashed potion and ether bottles by a wall. The glowing contents mingled, oily and sullied on the metal floor. Higher up on the wall was a ledge, with the tip of a steel toed boot visible over the edge.

The monster roared and lashed out randomly at the air.

Genesis' sword glowed red. He carved the monster in two.

He leapt up onto the ledge, uncaring for the monster still collapsing beneath him.

Hawke leaned against the wall, pale and still. Her hands were limp, but still holding her staff to her chest.

Her eyes blinked slowly. His heart jumped with relief. He knelt at her side and brushed her damp hair back from her face. She was burning up and sticky with sweat. She jerked at the touch but calmed at his voice.

"It's me, Hawke. I've got you."

"Gen?" she managed, her voice barely a breath.

Her leg was in a bad way, twisted and dyed a dark red. The stench of the monster's poison was strong. He squashed his relief as much as he had his panic in order to focus.

He cradled her head and flooded Cure spells through her system. He wasn't the magical force of nature she was, but with materia he was the best field medic Shinra had. The poison had been in her system for too long for a simple cure, however.

Her eyes roamed and landed on nothing. Given the poison he sensed she was likely seeing things. He held her up and got an antidote down her throat. She choked on the last of it.

"Sorry," she rasped in the dark.

"What, for doing such a high risk mission alone?" he snapped.

She tried to shake her head but he didn't let her.

"It's good money," she slurred. She tried to shrug and winced instead. "Sorry."

She had healed him so many times he couldn't understand why she felt she owed him an apology for finally needing something in return. It wasn't how he would have wanted to pay her back but he was honoured to be her first call.

"Where's your backup?" He wouldn't have sent a Second Class into this place alone. Not that any Second Class was comparable to her, but they worked with the support of Shinra's entire overfunded military. She was out here without so much as a friend at her back. Useless rage passed through him at the hands-off mercenary guild, at the Turks who played at being her friends, and everyone else who wasn't here.

She blinked in concentration. "I.. don't know. Isabela sailed away. Merrill and Fenris went north." Her brow furrowed and a hand twitched. "Varric's…" She fell quiet.

He focused on healing.

Her lucided came and went, and she rambled in bursts. She called him Anders and told him to stop healing her, that it was safer to run. She didn't want him to risk getting caught because of her. She offered more apologies. He disliked it more with every repetition.

"You know it's not worth it," she muttered. "You'll get caught."

He pursed his lips, indignant at any attempt to tell him what was or wasn't worth his attention.

"Caught by who?" he asked instead.

She frowned like he was the one talking nonsense. "Don't be a fool, Anders."

"My name is Genesis, actually."

She thought that over for a moment. "I know a Genesis."

"Do you indeed?" He smiled despite the grimness of the moment. "What's he like?"

Her brow furrowed. He worked at the seeping surface injury, trying to stem the flow.

"He's..fIshing for compliments."

"Not a loyal and caring friend? A patient, talented healer with an excellent bedside manner?"

"He is some of those things."

He harrumphed. He had one hand on her leg to address the wound, and the other behind her back holding her up.

She blinked up through the haze. It was probably too dark for her to see him beyond two glowing eyes.

Her hand tightened around his arm for a second and she looked searchingly up at him.

"Genesis?" She sounded doubtful.

He stilled.

Consciousness slipped out from under her a moment later and her grip loosened.

Finally there was nothing more he could do and he felt confident moving her. He gently lifted her down from the ledge and carried her back to the exit, her armour poking into his side every step of the way. He didn't care, holding her close.

She didn't legally exist so he couldn't take her to the hospital. He buckled her into the car and took her home instead.

She resurfaced just as he was carrying her into his apartment. He slung her down off his shoulder onto the dining table. She blinked owlishly at the clean house.

"I thought you'd… drop me off at... my place," she rasped.

He scoffed, offended. "I'm not going to dump you on the curb. You can't even walk, what would you have done?."

She narrowed her eyes and searched for an answer for a long moment.

"I'd have figured something out."

"Mm-hm."

He removed her plate armour and helped her wiggle out of her clothes so he could tend to the injury properly. Her body was decorated with the evidence of having figured things out on her own many times before.

It filled him with a terrible nostalgia for a dream so long dead its remains had dried like a pressed flower. He became a SOLDIER to be a hero.

He ran his hands along the scarred gooseflesh of her thigh around the injury. She was awake and fully present, her eyes following him and a hand pressed against her head to stave off a headache from casting on empty.

Heroes weren't real, not the way he had once thought of them. She knew that with the same surety he did. If they were real, they weren't the people on the news, leading parades with a chest full of medals. Medals were cheap and parades a distraction.

"I"m going to reset it," he murmured.

She nodded. He gave her a countdown and then realigned the bone with a crunch. It should have hurt like death itself. She gasped and leaned forward against him. He held her up and flooded the bone with healing magic, fusing it back together.

He didn't want to be a hero, and she wasn't in need of one. All he knew was that he never wanted his name to join that list of those she whispered into the uncaring dark, alone, and without response. Without expecting a response. He wanted to guard her back as unflinchingly as she guarded his.

He threw back another ether and worked on her leg until it could hold her weight again. He had burned out as much of the poison as magic could achieve, the rest was a matter of her own body flushing it out.

Eventually the exhaustion of so much magical healing in one afternoon grew too much and Hawke slipped into a deep, natural sleep. He bound up what was left of her injuries and set her up in his bed to sleep it off, then got called back to HQ to explain why he'd disappeared without warning for half the day.

He looked at her from the door, dead to the world and little more than a mop of black hair sticking up out of the sea of blankets. She looked comfortable.

He activated the magic wards he knew full well she reinforced every time she visited, and left her in peace.

* * *

Hawke slept a deep, dreamless sleep.

She woke, still exhausted and aching in every extremity. She opened her bleary eyes to a beam of light entering a dark room from the opened door. She didn't know where she was, but her instincts told her it was fine. She poked her magic and regretted it instantly, hissing at the strain pulling through her chest.

A figure she hadn't noticed rifling through a cupboard turned at the sound. Red hair, red silk pajamas. Tiny golden monogram stitched onto the breast pocket. He was holding a familiar blanket he had pulled down from the top shelf.

"How are you feeling?" Genesis asked.

She mumbled something even she didn't understand. She felt like it probably went with a hand motion, but movement felt impossible just now.

She eyed the blanket he was holding. The fact that she was in his bed hovered around her head in wonky orbit a couple of times before she fully grasped it.

"Where are you going?" she managed, through a throat that felt as though it was entirely made of phlegm.

He gestured with his head. "I'll be on the couch if you need anything."

She made an inarticulate noise of disapproval.

"Really, Hawke."

She scoffed and committed to the gruelling act of getting up. Like hell was she kicking him out of his own bed.

He gave a cry of protest. "And just where do you think you're going?"

She squinted at him and gestured vaguely at the blanket.

He held it away from her. "No! If you think you're going to sleep on the couch in your state, I'll throw you out altogether."

She struggled to parse that for a moment. Her head was spinning from the effort of sitting up. She shifted so her legs were on the ground and bent over to grab her boots.

Genesis crossed the room faster than she thought was technically allowed. He snatched her boots off her.

"Absolutely not!"

She threw her hands up in indignation and immediately regretted it. Why were her arms sore, didn't she just hurt her leg? Wait, what did she do to her leg?

"You may be stubborn, Hawke, but you are also on so much medication I doubt you know what day it is. I am not losing this argument to you."

' _I never know what the date is_ ,' she wanted to reply, but had a vague sense that it probably would help her case. She held her tongue until she could think of a stronger rebuttal. It belatedly occurred to her she was in her underwear and thus her boots were of minimal use. 

She glared at him. He glared back. She wasn't entirely sure what she was arguing for. She didn't want him to be kicked out of his bed. That was it. He looked unassailable. This called for a truce.

She patted the other side of the bed, still squinting at him suspiciously. He might make a break for it, then she would need to throw herself out.

He scoffed. But he did put the blanket back.

She laid back down, and her body rejoiced. The rough texture of a thick bandage on her thigh drew her attention. She ran her fingers over it. Oh, that was big. She had no memory of how it got there. Given her current location and that Genesis was acting like a broody rooster, she could figure it out. The warm haze in her mind was withdrawing, leaving coldness and contextless details from the day. She shivered with cold.

Genesis pulled the covers on the other side of the bed and slid in next to her.

He stretched and sighed comfortably.

Had she really demanded he come fix her mess in the middle of the day? He'd done it, so she must have. She rolled over, facing her edge of the bed, her emotions a confused mess.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because you wouldn't let me be a gentleman and sleep on the couch, remember?" he replied, arch and lazy.

"That's not what I'm asking."

There was silence from the other side of the bed, and she feared, dreaded, hoped he wouldn't answer.

He rolled over, put an arm around her, and held her close. By the Maker, he was so nice and warm. She relaxed against him, almost sighing in relief but she held it at bay.

"Because you are not an inconvenience," he said, his breath hot against the back of her neck and the shell of her ear. "You are not a burden, you're not karma, and you're not a curse on those who know you. I will pick you back up as many times as you fall, Hawke, no matter how stubborn you're going to be about it."

She sniffed. Her eyes were suddenly impossibly itchy. She held the arm wrapped tightly around her midriff, which in turn held her securely against the strong chest at her back.

The best she could offer in response was a shaky, "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"I'm-"

"If the next word out of your mouth is 'sorry', so help me, Hawke, I'm going to serve you breakfast in bed."

She gave a weak laugh. "You _wouldn't_."

"Try me."

"I just might," she said with a tired but content sigh, before the soft call of sleep inexorably pulled her under.


	3. The First Gambit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hawke's First Gambit. Canon to the Thief Kindly Spoke.
> 
> See additional tags.

Marian Hawke was ten and she was good at lightning. Or at least she was good at conjuring it, not so good at controlling it. She had a scar shaped like a scraggly fern downing down her leg from an accidental blast. She was going to figure it out though.

On a grey winter’s morning she stood on the gravelly foreshore of the river, tucked away in a little sheltered bend hidden by the thick woods. She rubbed her hands together and practiced shooting her lightning bolts. 

Little Bethany watched from the grassy bank, her chubby legs swinging over the edge. Marian raised her hands. She concentrated hard on gathering mana, but it wasn’t very co-operative, slippery like an eel in a trap. She held it down in her hands and twisted it just right and a blast shot out. It was so fast, it zapped from her palm and landed with a  _ crack _ on a large rock. The rock split in two. She pouted. She’d wanted the bolt to go the other way.

“Lift your hands higher,” Bethany said, chewing on the end of her braid.

Marian lifted her hand as high as it could go. 

Bethany giggled. “No! Too high!”

“No, no, I should give it a try,” she replied with a wide grin. A bolt shot out, knocking her arm back with the force of it. It swung through the air, sparking wildly, only to fizzle out in the river.

Bethany giggled some more.

“Too high, you think?”

“Hey!”

A man in silver and red armour barged out of trees and charged Marian. She tripped and fell backwards. Bethany screamed. 

The Templar picked her up by the scruff of her neck. She panicked and writhed, flapping her hands at him. He caught a flailing arm and jerked it up. 

He was barking orders but she couldn’t hear anything, not her own screaming, not her own thoughts. Her hand found her pocket knife and she jabbed it at his face. He yelled out. She stabbed him again and again, her hands turning slick. He collapsed backwards with a splash.

She landed hard on the gravel, stinging her backside and hands. She panted, her breath haggard. Water trickled over her hands, taking curling lines of bright red with it.

She looked up at the body. It didn’t move. It didn’t do anything.

The stony river gurgled by as though nothing had happened. Bethany huddled on the ground with her hands clapped over her ears, sobbing.

Marian had thought… death would be noisier. That it took longer.

She stumbled up to her feet. Her thoughts were numb and jumbled. The body was so big. The blazing sword emblem on his chest stared at her. His eyes... She swallowed and looked at the sword again. She had to get rid of him. There were bears downstream.

She pushed him out into the freezing current and washed herself off. It was a good thing her tunic was already brown, she thought, as she scrubbed it. Her fingers trembled. Bethany started to wail. Marian shook herself and marched back out of the water.

“Come on, we’re going home,” she said, taking her little sister’s hand and trying to sound confident.

They climbed back up the bank and into the woods. 

They were Templars everywhere. 

Marian’s breath caught and she pulled Bethany behind a tree. The bark scraped against her back. Her heart beat like a drum in her chest. How did they know? Were they sent to find them? Did they find out about Pa?

Bethany hugged her leg and looked up at her, tears and snot running down her face. She was so scared she’d stopped crying. Marian’s bottom lip wobbled at the sight. 

She peeked out around the tree.

There was a man with bigger metal shoulders than the rest, pointing and giving orders. He said something about maleficarum. One with red hair and one an elf. Marian looked down at Bethany again, her forehead scrunching up. It… it wasn’t them. They were looking for someone else. 

She exhaled harshly. 

Then she straightened her back, and set her jaw. She stepped out from behind the tree. 

They approached the nearest Templar, a burly, balding man around Pa’s age. He had a giant sword on his back.

Bethany whimpered behind her. She squeezed her hand. 

The man turned around at the sound. 

“Excuse me sir,” Marian said. She lifted her chin and her voice wobbled slightly. ”We’re not lost.”

“I- what?” His bristly eyebrows frowned at them. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re on our way home and I  _ didn’t  _ get us lost. I meant to come this way. I’m not scared of the woods.”

He looked between her and Bethany, who had shoved her whole hand in her mouth. She felt like he could see magic branded on her face, the blood on her clothes. 

He slowly raised an eyebrow. “You’re… not scared?”

“No.” She sucked in a thin breath. “But… it would make Bethy feel better if you could take us home, please.”

He crossed his arms. “Did you fall in the river?”

“No,” the sopping wet Marian replied.

“Uh-huh.” 

His lips twitched and then he let out a booming guffaw. “Alright, let’s get you brave young ladies home.”

His giant gauntlet took Marian’s free hand, the bruised one, and he escorted them through the company of Templars, calling out to the captain that he had a very important mission. The captain nodded solemnly and wished them luck. 

The Templar walked them all the way back to the little farm.

Pa came out of the house, the skin around his eyes tight and his smile strained. The Templar made a joke about how brave they were, Pa laughed along and thanked him. His hands shook as he lifted Bethany up onto his hip and took Marian’s hand. 

The Templar ruffled her hair.

“You were very brave today,” he said and winked.

She ducked her head, feeling her cheeks heat. “Thank you, sir,” she managed. 

Pa squeezed her hand. The Templar set off back to go find apostates in the woods, and she got away with it. 


End file.
